Oh yes, I did: I watched the premiere of Sharknado 2: The Second One last night on SyFy. Why?
Because every now and then, your gray matter deserves a chance to check out and veg for awhile. And movies like Sharknado 2 are, in fact, a vacation for your brain. It’s best if you don’t try to actually think while you’re watching it, though. (But…everyone is talking about sharks in tornados as if that’s a real thing! And, she’s using a buzz saw as a prosthetic limb with no discernibile electrical source! And, he’s falling from the sky at a tremendous rate of speed, yet still managed to catch a moving chainsaw! Shhh shhh shhhhhhh……hush now, my dear cerebral cortex, you just lay back down and rest that frontal lobe of yours. This is no time for reasoning and higher thought processess. Settle down.)
The best part about the movie is not the plot (what plot?) or the incredible special effects (uh, no) or the frightening plausibility that this could actually happen (Sharks. In. Tornados.)
No, the thing that makes this movie so much fun is that the actors involved are in on the joke. They know they are participating in a vehicle that is so-awful-it’s-classic, and their only goal is to entertain their audience with the absurdity of it all. And boy, do they deliver!
A special shoutout to all of the truly inspired cameos in this sequel: Judd Hirsch of Taxi as the cab driver, Robert Hays of Airplane as the doomed pilot, Billy Ray Cyrus of “Achy Breaky Heart” fame as a gifted surgeon, and Bronx-born comedian Robert Klein as the mayor of New York City. Kudos to the casting director!
I also enjoyed the movie’s penchant for killing off its guest stars in spectacular fashion–is there anything more satisfying than seeing purple-haired reality star Kelly Osborne and gossip diva Perez Hilton suddenly become shark food? No, I think not.
Best of all, SyFy has already announced the release of Sharknado 3, coming in 2015. My weary brain is looking forward to it already.